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Industry & Manufacturing

The Museum's collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.

The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.

The collections reach far beyond tools and machines. Some 460 episodes of the television series Industry on Parade celebrate American industry in the 1950s. Numerous photographic collections are a reminder of the scale and even the glamour of American industry.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for an improved sheet-folding apparatus, made to stand as an independent machine, or to be attached to a web perfecting press; the invention was granted patent number 186384.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a machine for coating electrotype; the invention was granted patent number 85411. The patent details a machine for brushing black lead (plumbago, graphite) or bronze powder onto either wax or gutta percha molds, in order to give them conducting surfaces. Stephen Tucker was an employee and, from I860, a partner with R. Hoe & Co. He was responsible for numerous patents for the company, and was the author of the company history, "A History of R. Hoe & Company, 1834- 1885.”

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a rotary perfecting press which was granted patent number 92050. The patent details improvements to sheet- or web-fed perfecting presses. Instead of being attached to the impression cylinder, the press blanket was an endless web that travelled with the paper and acted as its support. The press was patented in England in 1871 (Patent 1825 to W.E.Newton).

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed cylinder printing press which was granted patent number 108785. The patent details methods of controlling the motion of the type bed. The model is broken.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed cylinder press which was granted patent number 124460. The patent describes improved mechanisms for control of the impression cylinder, inking rollers, sheet flier, and feed guides on stop cylinder presses for typographic or lithographic printing. The model is broken and incomplete.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a rotary printing press which was granted patent number 131217. The invention offers a new system of feeding, carrying, and delivering sheets for rotary perfecting presses. The model consists of the central group of feeding cylinders. According to Stephen D. Tucker’s History of R. Hoe & Company, a press on this plan was capable of printing 8000 sheets per hour and was used successfully by the New York Daily News.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed printing press; the invention was granted patent number 173295. The patent describes improvements to the movement of the bed, the sheet fly, and the inking table of cylinder presses.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a sheet-delivery apparatus which was granted patent number 191494. The patent describes a delivering cylinder with accessories: grippers, tapes, a folding blade, and pasting devices.